Knowledge management systems are often employed to promote effective utilization of knowledge in knowledge bases. Such knowledge bases can comprise large numbers of documents or articles that are contributed to the knowledge base by individuals participating in the knowledge base.
Participation in the knowledge base by individuals in the knowledge base often further comprises rating of documents submitted by other contributors, as well as linking relevant documents, indicating that they have read particular documents, and citing some of the document in the knowledge base in the creation or other documents.
Identification of authoritative individuals in particulars fields within a knowledge base has proven to be complex, particularly if such an individual is to be located in a limited timeframe. Some factors that can be factored into automatically locating desired target individuals can tend to be misleading and to give an inaccurate indication of an associated contributor's authority or importance in the knowledge base within a particular field of interest. The number of people who follow publication by a particular person in the knowledge base can, for example, be indicative of popularity more than of authority.
One example of such a knowledge base may comprise an online web forum in which multiple contributors provide online user-assistance about technical issues relating to a particular hardware or software product. The web forum may, for example, be hosted by a website affiliated with the product. Thus, for example, when a user experiences difficulty in adjusting a particular setting of a software product, she may lodge a query on the web forum, responsive to which one or more knowledge base contributors in the customer support personnel may reply with online comments on the forum, in which advice or suggestions are provided on how to change the particular software setting with which the user is struggling. In a particular responsive comment, a contributor may link to earlier relevant comments, which may include comments by other contributors. These technical support comments may be rated by the users and/or by other contributors, for example by giving comments a thumbs up or a thumbs down, indicating whether or not the comment was found to be helpful, or by giving the comment a number rating. In such an example, the contributors to the knowledge base comprise the technical assistance personnel responding to user queries, and the documents of the knowledge base may include the website comments.